Or, what a shock to the system Wednesday night was for the Obama camp.

Whatever the impetus, President Obama showed up to a rally here on Friday morning hyped up, in attack mode, and primed with the lines that were absent — to the chagrin of diehard Democrats and the befuddlement of others — from this week’s disastrous debate versus Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

“This morning, we found out that the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since I took office,” he proudly declared after taking the stage 20 minutes past schedule, bringing the crowd jumping to its feet. “…Today’s news certainly is not an excuse to try to talk down the economy to score a few political points. It’s a reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now.”

Risers full of women were carefully assembled behind the president, getting a pep talk from staffers and pitching blue “Forward” signs when Obama came on. Someone in the audience blew bubbles in the air as the crowd cheered wildly for their candidate. The national anthem was performed by Mary Millben, promoted as an “active member of Republicans for Obama.” The president was introduced by Katherine Waddell, a former Virginia House delegate and independent who said that the GOP had moved too far to the right for her to stay active in the party.

“There’s just no room for me in today’s radical Republican Party,” Waddell said, calling the GOP “so far to the extreme right, especially when it comes to women’s health, I don’t recognize it anymore.”

The rally was billed as a grass-roots women’s event, but current events altered the focus a bit: namely, the bad debate and the better jobs report, for which Obama was taking his first victory lap.

Equipped with his trusty teleprompter and facing an enthusiastic crowd rather than his Republican opponent and sleepy Jim Lehrer, Obama’s claws also came out.

“My opponent, you know, has been trying to do a two-step and reposition and got an extreme makeover,” Obama said. “…He thinks that if we just spend another $5 trillion on tax cuts, that, yes, skew towards the wealthiest, if we get rid of more regulations on Wall Street, then our problems will be solved. Jobs and prosperity will rain down from the sky, the deficits will magically disappear, we will live happily ever after.”

Then the president veered to the Democrats’ — and Twitter’s — main takeaway from the first debate.

“When he was asked what he’d actually do to cut spending and reduce the deficit, his big example was to go after public television,” Obama said. “So for all you moms and kids out there, don’t worry, somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird. Rounding him up. Elmo’s got to watch out, too.”

“Governor Romney plans to let Wall Street run wild again, but he’s going to bring down the hammer on Sesame Street. It makes perfect sense.”

The Obama campaign alerted reporters to keep an eye out for Big Bird at Romney’s rally in Abingdon, Va., today. Sure enough, someone in a fuzzy yellow bird suit was pitching a sign reading “crack down on Wall Street, not Sesame Street” outside Romney’s event in the rural southwestern corner of the state.

“The other night, he said he’d repeal Obamacare as soon as he took office. Don’t boo. Vote. Vote. Vote,” Obama continued against Romney. “But after he said that, then he back-tracked and said, ‘No, wait, at least I’ll make sure to cover folks with preexisting conditions.’ And then I — I explained, well, actually, your plan doesn’t do that. And then his campaign had to come out and say, ‘Actually, that’s not true; our plan wouldn’t do that.’ So, Governor Romney was fact-checked by his own campaign. That’s rough. That’s rough.”

“Governor Romney said he’d get rid of Planned Parenthood funding. Apparently, this, along with Big Bird, is driving the deficit. … My opponent has called himself severely conservative, but let me tell you something, there’s nothing conservative about a government that prevents a woman from making her own health care decisions.”

“Governor Romney talks about freedom, but freedom is the ability to determine the care you need when you need it. Freedom is the ability to change jobs or start your own business without the fear of losing your health insurance. Freedom is the knowledge that you’ll no longer be charged more than men for the same health care, or denied affordable coverage just because you’ve beat cancer,” Obama continued.

The president dropped the magic number that mysteriously was missing from his debate arguments, infuriating supporters who wanted him to use the undercover video of a donor’s meeting against Romney.

Change, Obama said, “certainly can’t happen if you’re willing to write off half the nation before you even take office.”

“Now, people forget back in 2008, 47 percent of the country didn’t vote for me, but on the night of the election I said to all those Americans, I said, ‘I may not have one your vote, but I hear your voices. And I need your help. And I will be your president too,’” Obama continued. “And, Virginia I don’t know how many of you will vote for me this time around, but I promise you, no matter how many do, I will be your president too.”

The president wrapped up to Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America,” a song often heard at Romney-Ryan rallies.

Romney hit at the new jobs report in his own Virginia stop.

“There was a report that just came out this morning on job creation this last month. There were fewer new jobs created this month than last month,” he said. “And the unemployment rate, as you know, this year has come down very, very slowly. But it’s come down nonetheless. The reason it’s come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work.”

Romney said the real unemployment rate should be 11 percent, by figuring the same workforce participation as the day the president was elected. A release from the Senate Republican Policy Committee said the real unemployment rate, including marginally attached workers and those who can only find part-time work, should be 14.7 percent for September.

“I’ll tell you this: When I’m president of the United States, that unemployment rate is going to come down, not because people are giving up and dropping out of the workforce, but because we’re creating more jobs,” Romney said.

Obama holds a razor-thin lead over Romney — 0.4 — in this state in the Real Clear Politics polling average. A Rasmussen Reports poll out yesterday had Romney up by one point over the incumbent in the commonwealth.

It was Obama’s 17th campaign stop in Virginia this year, far outpacing the six official events he’s had in this D.C. bedroom state in 2012.

But it wasn’t just a rally to pep a commander in chief’s spirits after a lackluster week. The presidential race in Virginia will likely be influenced by the turnout for the Senate race here, where two politicians with lengthy histories — who both stoke plenty of partisan feelings in the campaign — are battling to fill the seat left vacant by retiring Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.).

Webb won the seat six years ago after the “macaca moment” of then-incumbent Sen. George Allen, who is taking another stab at the office versus former Virginia governor and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine.

Unfortunately for Gov. Bob McDonnell, Kaine was introduced as Virginia Gov. Time Kaine this morning — minus the former.

He noted local projects aided by stimulus funds — improvements on the Fairfax County Parkway, the rail project to Dulles International Airport — and devoted much of his speech on the George Mason University campus to education and Pell grants.

“Students and young people ought to be standing up for this president who stood up for them,” Kaine said.

And in the Romney needle-du-jour, he added, “You’re not going to win by firing Big Bird.”

Kaine devoted the end of his speech to his Senate challenger, criticizing Allen for trying to “dismiss” discussion on social issues and telling the crowd that Republican social issues are also economic ones.

“If we don’t’ embrace policies that help women, we harm the economy,” he said.

In a Rasmussen Reports poll released yesterday, Kaine was up 7 points on Allen. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Kaine up by 4.

It’s one of those races glazed by high partisan emotions that could inspire turnout to the polls, a critical factor in any swing state.

Allen issued a statement today on the September jobs report, criticizing a 30-year low in the labor participation rate.

“Like President Obama and Vice President Biden, Tim Kaine’s answer to nearly every challenge is to raise taxes,” Allen said. “While Vice President Biden cheers a $1 Trillion tax hike on hard-working Americans, Tim Kaine is open to raising taxes on everyone. More taxes will only result in more job losses.”

According to the university, the crowd was at the concert hall’s capacity of 1,935. Only a few empty seats were seen.

After shaking hands with the crowd for several minutes, Obama was out the door and over to Dulles to head to — you guessed it — Ohio.

Bridget Johnson is a veteran journalist whose news articles and opinion columns have run in dozens of news outlets across the globe. Bridget first came to Washington to be online editor at The Hill, where she wrote The World from The Hill column on foreign policy. Previously she was an opinion writer and editorial board member at the Rocky Mountain News and nation/world news columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
She is an NPR contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, Politico and more, and has myriad television and radio credits as a commentator. Bridget is Washington Editor for PJ Media.

Oh, stop. If anything, I see this as another debate-stopper. The jobs added are mostly government and part-time. So, Romney can go “the Big Government” route or “the suffering middle-class” route. I’m sure he will. Barry can run around claiming “victory” all he wants. He now has someone who will look him in the eye on national TV and tell him: “Bee-ess!”

Most intelligent people realize that HUGE numbers are fungible, at least when in the wrong hands. It is not as simple as 1 + 1.

This blogger knows all about numbers, having co-owned a corporate tax practice in the NYC/NJ area. Yours truly ‘followed the money’ on many occasions. The things people will do to hide the truth….

As a matter of fact, we used to call it ‘garbage in, garbage out’. Not everyone became a client of the firm, and the ones who were told to go elsewhere were those who diddled with their corporate books.

In other words, honest number crunchers/tax advisers know when things don’t add up, when the books are cooked. However, honestly does not go together within the rein of Obama. Why is this important? Because if they were honest, they would add into the mix ALL of the people who are no longer looking for work, too dispirited to enter the workforce, plus so many other relevant factors. In reality, unemployment was always higher, than presented in the first place. And, the list of dishonesty goes on.

Besides, now that the undecideds see that Mitt is not the bugaboo he is presented to be, Americans are more than anxious to change leadership –

Great post. You know, they are so wicked, conniving, lying, cheating, manipulating, evil. It concerns me that we are not fighting fire with fire. We are not playing their game. We are playing with the rules of engagement. Gentlemanly. We need to apply the Rules of Radical Conservatives in order to win. President Barack Axelrod will come with plenty of ammo and use all of his narcissist traits next debate with the Town Hall format. Romney had better be prepared for that type of debate and start applying those same RULES!!!

What a load of crap; 114,000 jobs. That qualifies as piss poor. As for the 7.8%…..fairy dust. Let’s see how stupid the electorate really is. One thing for certain, the millions out of work must be snickering.

Whatever the impetus, President Obama showed up to a rally here on Friday morning hyped up, in attack mode, and primed with the lines that were absent — to the chagrin of diehard Democrats and the befuddlement of others — from this week’s disastrous debate versus Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

Cuz a lot of that stuff doesn’t work so well when you let someone rebut it. In fact, it could make him seem unpresidential, a fool and a liar. Only Obamatons eat that kind of sandwich.

Still, I’m surprised he didn’t go there in the last debate. If being unpresidential, a fool and a liar is all you know, you ought to go with it, right?

I am sure that coal miners, pipe manufacturing workers, oil rigs workers, the 20,000 he fired for the GM affair are all big fans of Mullah Obama the Redistributor.
Big messiah for the workers, sure.
And if re-elected, the crash of the dollar will greatly help the blue collars.

It’s only 16 trillions, come on.
We can tax the rich, and when we have no longer any rich we can say that there is an international conspiracy against the Soviet Union of America.

Were the words those of Obama or something his handlers typed to his teleprompter? I am betting the teleprompter in chief selected the words to say and was written before hand as it has been done at other times. I have run a chat room using a bot and know the scam which can be orchestrated by pre-progammed off-line lines. An empty suit using a ghost writer to be a “master communicator”1 Bah!!!

1)Obama is taking a phony narrative that the intentionally misread jobs report was “good” news, when in fact there wasn’t a single good thing in it…brought him back his mojo. Unless mojo stands for more jive or more junk, it could do no such thing.

2)They then moved on to a phony Republican haranguing about a phony issue related to “women’s health” and “extremism” that doesn’t exist. Certainly not in Romney or Ryan. If one needs to lie in order to create gender warfare in order to obtain their mojo, then their mojo is a fraud.

3)Obama then moved on to the $5trillion dollars which has been utterly refuted and admitted to be a false and phony issue, essentially a lie. This is three straight lies out of the gate, this last one an ADMITTED LIE. If one needs to tell three straight lies in order to get their mojo back, they don’t have any mojo, they have a pathology.

4)Obama then moved onto Big Bird and Elmo and Planned Parenthood. NOBODY is suggesting that these things not be allowed to exist. Merely that the federal government can’t afford to borrow from the Chinese to pay for them. If schools cut programs because they can’t afford them, if small businesses cut luxury fleet cars, if families cut Martha’s Vineyard vacations…it’s not a slam on luxury cars or exorbitant vacations, it’s simply living within your budget and trimming back to necessities.

Since Obama would rather gut our defense budget in half than cut back on things that could be easily sustained without taxpayers shouldering them by BORROWING money, Obama has created a straw man and a phony choice. If you need to tell four lies to get your mojo back, you need long term counseling.

5)Finally, Obama got his never up to suggest that Obamacare is going to help the country, a lie so large that it needs its own confessional and day of Atonement.

No, Obama didn’t get his mojo back. He got his teleprompter back. It apparently repels the Ninth Commandment.

You are right. Even the Economist (which is not exactly known for a conservative slant) says these numbers are off. A couple of their analysts estimate that there would have to be GDP growth over 5% if these job figures are correct- and GDP growth is obviously not that high. The most likely thing is that the unemployment rate swing back to the mean in November- meaning it will RISE, probably to 8% or greater.

Is there an angle to this post that I’m missing? I’ve already heard/seen/read this same story on the radio news (ABC & CBS), local & national TV news (ABC-local, FoxNews -national), online at the WSJ, AP, WaPo and assorted political sites. I come to PJM for the stories I can’t get elsewhere or for an insightful or thoughtful take on the usual propaganda. Maybe it’s just too subtle or I’m just weary of it all.

Those numbers will be revised up, a day or two after the election. As my 10-yr old says, Obama is really bad in math (I think he saw that on a sign somewhere) He also says Mrs. Obama is really bad at picking out lunches….

“He thinks that if we just spend another $5 trillion on tax cuts, that, yes, skew towards the wealthiest, if we get rid of more regulations on Wall Street, then our problems will be solved. Jobs and prosperity will rain down from the sky, the deficits will magically disappear, we will live happily ever after.”

He said essentially the same thing in the debate. The only difference is that in that forum, he wasn’t able to bellow dramatically in front of a hand picked crowd of shreiking fools and then have no response to his nonsense.
So the idea that this was missing in the debate? Sure, acting like a child with dumb Big Bird comments was missing. Are you trying to suggest that if he’d made stupid comments about Big Bird in the debate, Romney would have withered under them? A better headline would have been “Free from facing debate and challenges to his nonsense from Romney, Obama reverts back to demagoguery abd childishness.”

The Affirmative Action, Telepromter Kid the Unqualified, Inefficient, Incompetent Barry HUSSEIN Soetero Kardashian America’s first Gay, Celebrity, USURPER President has never had to face criticism in his life without a Lame Stream EneMedia and a corrupt Regime protecting him and running cover and carrying his water for him.
Is it any wonder this ‘Empty Suit’ cannot do it facing an opponent without the aid of a Teleprompter and the Moderators. God knows the moderator tried to help him but to no avail such was his pathetic surrender. The excuses being offered by his acolytes for his FAILURE are bordering on the fantasist ramblings of the deranged. The Lame stream EneMedia’s defined ‘smartest man in the room’ has just proved himself to be anything but.

Look, Barak, America saw you for who you are in the Denver debate. You’re a mental lightweight. A media creation. The party’s over. I would suggest that you spare yourself what is left of your delusional moment in history, and just get in as many vacations and golf games on the U.S. taxpayer dime as you can. Look, it’s all just a big drag to you, so why not just, I dunno, put in a full day’s work for a change? Spend a full day in the Oval Office doing your damn job? — it would look great on your resume.

Chris Cizzilla at the WaPo had actual analysis of Obama’s stump performance today. He called it a Costanza performance.

Years ago I worked in a mining research lab with a short nerdy guy that weighed maybe 110 pounds. He wasn’t a great chemist and after analyzing for silver, carelessly left a toxic chemical in the waste pan of the AA spectrometer. The chemist who used the instrument following him used an acid matrix that released cyanide into the lab. Someone quickly identified the smell, so we evacuated PDQ otherwise it could have killed us. Once outside, nerdy guy admitted his error, whereupon he was promptly socked in the nose by his very large and muscular boss, Stan. TKO. He laid there for a few minutes all of us too angry to look at him.

For weeks, poor little nerdy guy kept claiming “I could have beaten the crap out of Stan… if I could have gotten up.”

Not until today have I seen such a pathetic display of phony machismo – not to be confused with mojo. Yeah Obama, we know you coulda stood up to that lying Romney…

… just add that to the very very long list of lies you tell yourself and others. The biggest disagreement Obama has with Romney is that Obama really does think he is entitled to his own facts along with the airplane and the house.

Under the circumstances, isn’t saying “The unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent last month” like someone saying, “I had 8% fewer cavities this year,” while ignoring the fact that he has 30% fewer teeth?

There’sLies, there’s D*mned Lies – and then there’s the Government Statistics of a Lying morally corrupt USURPERS Regime.

America’s biggest shame will be if the voting public shows it is naive, gullible and lets face STUPID enough to re-elect this ‘COMPOSITE” USURPER.
Will they see sense and get rid of him – I’m not holding my breath. Wasn’t it P.T.Barnum who said ‘No one ever lost money underestimating the stupidity of the General Populace”.

Give that the USURPER has just proven how much of a ‘duck out of water’ he is without his Teleprompter to help him if I were the Moderator Team for the next debate I would be especially vigilant checking that there was no implant in the USURPERS ears to pass ODUMBO the answers to the questions and Mitt’s rebuttals.

We miraculously found 873,000 more employed people in a month where we added 3 million part-time jobs and lost 2.447,000 full-time jobs. Per BLS A-1 and A-8
There are 27,349,000 part time workers out of 142,974,000 from the Household Survey.

Will the Republicans or the friendly media please spend a few hours and fully examine these reports, rather than let the gov’t write the cherry-picked headlines.
I will send you the report if you email me at allancrain@aol.com

The BLS report is not “fake.” It is a simple reflection of the power of incumbency.

There has been a concerted effort to hire in the Federal government for months that is now just showing up in the BLS data. Check out the report section on the lowering of government worker (Federal, state & local) unemployment to below 5%.

That isn’t a conspiracy.

It is called “The advantage of incumbency.” Every President does what he can to juice the economy on election day. Pres. Obama is no different.

All of Obama’s statements are what the French call “l’esprit de l’escalier” literally “the spirit of the staircase” or the wisdom of the staircase i.e. when you think of the comeback you should have said as you are going down the staircase.
In Obama’s case even if he had the presence of mind during the debate to present his comeback in real time it wouldn’t have helped since Romney would have responded with something even more devastating and would still have whupped his ass.

The post debate critiques have descended into the abyss of the absurd. People quibble about the progress of 8.1 to 7.8 % unemployment as if this was a foot ball score. This is not a one month dip. Unemployment has been so high, for so long, that people have quit looking for a job. I have read that if a fifty year old man is let go, there is a high probability that he will never find another job in his life time. This is structural long term unemployment. People are desperate, taking two or three part time jobs, and still the foreclosures are washing through the nation. (An island in this sea, are the suburbs around Washington D. C., some of the wealthiest communities in the nation.)

Both candidates have been accused of lying, while trying to discuss programs which are a significant fraction of our economy in two minutes. Partisans spend hours picking their words apart, for tactical gain. I empathy with both men on Obamacare (at least we have a name for it). I do not care if Big Bird is killed and cooked; we have more pressing problems.

What was said, but ignored, is the fundamental choice between Federal control, or private control of the economy, Bain Capital or the EPA. The argument is the extent of the control; Romney – less, Obama – more. We must decide.

There is a murky spending principle in the defunding of Planned Parenthood. They claim they spend very little on abortions, that most of their money goes to health care for women. If you can believe their numbers, they spend circa $40 per abortion; I find that absurd. Some body is fudging. The simple legal fix is to do what Obama promised in the passage of Obamacare; The US will not fund abortions. Most of PP’s money comes from federal grants, some body is fudging.

I can accept if some one disagrees with me, but I can not abide lies on life or death issues, unemployment, or abortions.

BLS’ September 2012 unemployment figure of 7.8% (household incomes) defies all logic.
April 2012
1)Number of jobs created = 115,000
2)U-3 = 8.1%
3)U-6 = 14.5%
September 2012
1)Number of jobs created = 114,000 (net decline)
2)U-3 = 7.8% (net decline)
3)U-6 = 14.7% (net increase)
Conclusion:
In April 2012 more jobs were created (115,000) than in September 2012 (114,000)
In April 2012 U-3 was 8.1% yet in September 2012 U-3 was 7.8% (with a decline in job creation).
In April 2012 U-6 was 14.5% yet in September 2012 U-6 INCREASED to 14.7% (this data correlates to a decline in job creation).

What possibly can explain BLS’ ,September 2012, 7.8% data point?

BLS must be asking all Americans to believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus AND Peter Pan all in the same breath. September 2012 true figure will be revised to 8.2% (estimated) in December 2012 (after November 2012 election).

Truly shameful display of government AFSCME union complicit chicanery with a Chicago-style thuggery currently on full display for all Americans to witness. Pray. Amen.

Like so many others I smelled a rat as soon as I saw that 7 handle and did some cipherin and goesintas.

Down to 7.8%? Do the math using BLS own numbers. 114,000 new jobs in September and July was revised upward by 40,000 and August upward by 46,000 — don’t know how they missed these in the previous months but let’s play along — for a total of 200,000 more jobs. Somehow, according to Obama’s labor department, this reduced unemployment in a labor force of 155,063,000 by 0.3% from 8.1% to 7.8%. I get closer to a 0.1% decrease (200,000 divided by 155,063,000) which means we’re still at 8% and that’s being generous because remember we’re using their own figures.

Coincidentally there is an election about a month from now. Obama’s labor department wouldn’t mess with the figures would they? Maybe I need a new calculator.

This is merely anecdotal, but I clearly remember the date Nov 6, 2008. It’s the day my cousin’s little boy was born. It was also the day my employer announced its first round of layoffs following the Economic Crisis. It was 2 days after the 2008 election. Talk among yourselves.